Beck wonders where he can score some skewered scorpions while wandering Beijing. / publicity photo

Written by

Mark Earnest

Special to the Reno Gazette-Journal

Musician Beck in 2008 / publicity photo/Reno Gazette-Journal

If you want to go

Beck plays with opener Devendra Banhart at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Grand Sierra Resort Theater. Tickets are $42.50, available at the Grand Sierra and Ticketmaster outlets or ticketmaster.com. Details: 789-2000.

RENO STORIESBeck fans in Reno will be some of the first in the country to see his new stage show, as the tour's opening date is set for the Biggest Little City. Beck said in his interview last week that it was simple routing that led to the tour start in Reno.

"We could have booked (the first date) in Vegas, but I just thought, 'I haven't been to Reno in a while," Beck said.

Beck had two fond memories of Reno that he shared. One was from his show at the Pioneer Center in 1997, about halfway through the tour for his "Odelay" album.

"I remember that we went to this great Western store you had there, and we all bought cowboy hats," he said. "We ended up wearing them onstage for the rest of the tour, so Reno was responsible for that."

Beck also remembered another earlier Reno stop during his first national tour.

"We were going around the whole United States on that tour and I think we were on our way back to L.A. when we played in Reno," he said. "We were driving from, I think it was, Salt Lake City and at some point on the way we got this old fusion, kind of new age music at a truck stop, just as a laugh."

Unfortunately, the joke ended up on Beck and his band: "We put it in the rental van to listen, and it was god-awful, really like 'dentist office' jazz and we were all laughing about it. But then it was, 'joke's over,' so we tried to get it out of the tape deck but the eject button wouldn't work, and it was like that the rest of the tour."

"So we were riding into Reno with the soft jazz pumping."

Sounds like a future Beck lyric to me, sir.

-- Mark Earnest

More

ADVERTISEMENT

When he was first popular in the 1990s, singer-songwriter Beck got tagged as the king of irony for his pop-culture strewn style that blended hip-hop and rock with cryptic and humorous lyrics. But it wasn't a title he relished at all.

"Now, I feel like, 'How can I outgrow that?'" Beck said in an interview last week from his home in Los Angeles.

The answer has come with "Modern Guilt," his latest album, which has earned plaudits for its more serious tone. Beck will kick off his latest tour in Reno on Thursday at the Grand Sierra Resort theater.

Beck agreed that the new album isn't as lighthearted as some of his previous work, such as his biggest hits "Loser" and "Where It's At." It's more like a danceable cousin to his "Sea Change" album from 2002, which earned Beck his first Top 10 album, even though it marked a radical departure.

"Before, I had a tendency to put lines in that were more comedic -- I don't know if that's the word for it -- or maybe absurd," Beck said. "I've started to edit those out a little bit more."

He said it was important that "Modern Guilt" work as a whole album, and that some songs didn't make the cut for that reason.

"I think over and over people were reacting to the parts in my songs that are funny, instead of the parts that were more sincere or saying something a bit more beyond that," Beck said. "Like 'Guero' and 'Hell Yes' (both from his 2004 album 'Guero'), those one or two funny songs were on there and it changes the mood. So I thought, 'What if I leave those songs off? How does that change the feeling of the whole record?' And I think people noticed that."

Beck said this evolution in his songs took a while, mainly because he didn't want to come off as pretentious.

"It's something that I think took a while for me to be brave enough to do," he said. "I don't need to mug at the camera. I can commit to something and say what I need to say. Some of my music is like a guy winking at you, but I think that can be a crutch."

Beck said what he'd really like to master is a mix between comedy and seriousness, something that he sees in other art forms.

"You can have a Fellini or Goddard extravaganza with these funny, ridiculous moments, but it also hits on things so basic on being human, asking the biggest questions about humanity next to this preposterous comedy. I don't know how I can master the art of that, but it's something I've tried to do before and haven't quite hit the mark."

Beck's loyal fans might disagree with his modesty, and if they've been along for the whole ride they've careened through a fair share of left turns: from the hip-hop-rock patchwork quilts of "Midnite Vultures" or "Odelay" to the more acoustic vibe of "Sea Change" or "One Foot In The Grave." His last two CDs, "Guero" and "The Information" combined those elements and more, from straight blues to experimental squawking.

Surprisingly, Beck said he's tried for those last few records to have them be "tied together somehow. I really don't try to make it different when I go in, but it just ends up that way.

"I know that I get criticized (for style changes). I know that we lose people, maybe two-thirds of the audience, on each record, but then by the end of the next record we have a whole new audience. Then we lose that one (laughs)."

Whichever audience goes to see Beck's Reno show, there definitely will be something new, starting with a stripped-down, four-piece backing band of all-new players from Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. The group already has toured Europe as a warm-up to these first American dates for "Modern Guilt."

The stage set also will be new, and Beck is known for some interesting variations on a live show: a DJ who "scratches" DVD images instead of vinyl, the band eating onstage during Beck's solo acoustic set, or the famed marionette versions of his band who "played" at the same time and were projected on video screens.

"Every time I do something different, I create some kind of show, and as we tour, it evolves, so at the end we go to Japan and Australia and then we retire the whole thing," Beck said.

This time, Beck said the stage set is being designed by the folks responsible for electronic band Daft Punk's elaborate stage shows.

"It's a very complex thing," Beck tried to explain. "I actually don't understand what it's going to be, but I think whatever it is, it will be really original. I know they are building these panes of glass, and they are going to play films on it so the glass warps the images."

It was a similar quest for something new that led to the different genesis for "Modern Guilt." Beck said he already recorded "a ton of stuff" when he got a call from Danger Mouse, the acclaimed producer who previously worked with Gnarls Barkley and Gorillaz, among others.

"He only had time to do one song, and it came out pretty well, so I asked if he could do more," Beck said. "He said he only wanted to do an entire album or nothing."

Beck took up the challenge, both writing songs spontaneously and revamping some of that older material.

"When I was writing a song with his beats, it was the most natural and fresh," Beck said. "The stuff I had sitting around for two years was not as inspiring. What we worked on felt totally new."